Natural-born-citizen clause

Status as a natural-born citizen of the United States is one of the eligibility requirements established in the United States Constitution for holding the office of President or Vice President. This requirement was intended to protect the nation from foreign influence.

The U.S. Constitution uses but does not define the phrase "natural born Citizen", and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning. The consensus of early 21st-century constitutional scholars, together with relevant case law, is that natural-born citizens include, subject to exceptions, those born in the United States. Many scholars have also concluded that those who meet the legal requirements for U.S. citizenship "at the moment of birth", regardless of place of birth, are also natural-born citizens. Every president to date was either a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or was born in the United States; of those in the latter group, there have been seven that had at least one parent who was not born on U.S. soil.

The natural-born-citizen clause has been mentioned in passing in several decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and by some lower courts that have addressed eligibility challenges, but the Supreme Court has never directly addressed the question of a specific presidential or vice-presidential candidate's eligibility as a natural-born citizen. Many eligibility lawsuits from the 2008, 2012, and 2016 election cycles were dismissed in lower courts due to the challengers' difficulty in showing that they had standing to raise legal objections. Additionally, some experts have suggested that the precise meaning of the natural-born-citizen clause may never be decided by the courts because, in the end, presidential eligibility may be determined to be a non-justiciable political question that can be decided only by Congress rather than by the judicial branch of government.

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